Chapter Forty-Seven
Forty-Seven
Gabriel loved Tintagel best when the sky was clear and the wind was cool and blustery, coming in off the sea to shake him awake anytime he stepped away from his desk.
They’d set him up with a study in a tower; Arthur complained endlessly every time he reached the top of the stairs, and proclaimed that he was going to cease their courtship so that he never had to do it again.
“You take all these walks,” Gabriel said, when Arthur came storming into the room, kissed Gabriel on the temple, and then flopped onto the chair by the window, fanning himself extravagantly, “voluntarily, every day, for hours.”
“Yes,” Arthur said, bright with outrage, “but not uphill.”
Eventually Gabriel finished what he was writing, closed his books, and snuffed out the candle, and then they went down together, slowly, and Arthur complained again about the great walk, and Gabriel didn’t say that he could have waited downstairs, because he was glad he hadn’t.
“I miss the Beast,” Arthur said sadly, when they walked past a tapestry depicting a lion with just the same baffled outrage on its face as the kitten.
She’d been released into the wilder forests beyond the reaches of Camelot soon after they’d returned from their questing, fast grown to adulthood and too large and feral to stay, although she’d made great friends with Merlin Lucifer just as Arthur had predicted, and had spent her only happy days at the castle following him around, taking it in turns to biff each other soundly in the face.
Arthur was convinced, in fact, that he’d once seen Merlin Lucifer on the outskirts of town, trotting off merrily in the direction of the forest. “I think she might be his lady friend,” he told Gabriel later.
“I did lecture him about the age difference, but I suppose she’s a woman grown now and can make her own mistakes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we soon hear tales of mad kittens about, ginger and twice the size of a dog. ”
“I’m sure she misses you too,” Gabriel said now, obviously lying. She’d never taken to humans, and why should she? Gabriel was only just coming around to the idea of them himself.
He felt looser out here in Cornwall. Lighter.
The only people who wanted to have meetings with him were teachers and great scholars, and they found the world so very interesting, it made Gabriel fall in love with knowledge all over again.
He still slept badly half the time, woke up some nights in a sweaty panic, and his attacks of nerves by day had lessened somewhat but not gone away entirely. Still—lessened was something.
He and Bridget had tried to talk about it sometimes, their twin battle scars, but they usually just ended up sharing a bottle of wine instead and talking falteringly about the history of tourneys, and the statistics of the winners, the sole place where their interests collided.
Bridget was mostly happy to listen, interjecting with stories of real life on the road, which were frankly just as fascinating.
Gwen seemed to be under the impression that they were having extraordinary heart-to-hearts, and never pried, and neither of them corrected her.
On the wide, flat stairs down into the main hall, they passed Florian, who was staying here while he worked on his next book, a true and complete history of King Arthur and his round table.
It was going to include all sorts of details that had never been unearthed before and would be highly controversial; Gabriel expected that someone would dispute the translations of some of the Old English and the Brittonic the moment word got out, but Florian didn’t seem worried.
“Let them,” he said. “I’m ready to fight, in my own way. Poets can be very cutting, you know.”
The evenings were growing daily brighter, and they still had an hour or two before dinner. Arthur went to find the others, and Gabriel met them down by the stables.
“Nice day?” he asked Bridget, and she shrugged.
“Nobody will let me do anything,” she said, clearly miserable about it.
“You’re supposed to be taking a break,” Gwen countered. “That’s the entire point of you being here.”
“Well, I don’t like breaks,” Bridget said.
Arthur laughed. “We know. When I woke up this morning I saw you running up and down the beach, holding a big rock. I almost called for the guards, before I realized nobody was chasing you.”
She was antsy when she didn’t have anybody to fight, which was most of the time now.
Not that life was particularly peaceful.
Progress marched on, and so did Gabriel, back out across the country in short bursts to try to allay new concerns, engage in public debates, to make it clear he was in fact a person, not the spawn of Satan.
At least the cultists were pretty happy with him, with the Grail on public display at Camelot.
Now he just had to work on everybody else.
It was still a very difficult job. He hated it about three-quarters of the time. But it was the work of his life, and now, more than he ever had before, he felt he’d been born to do it.
Sidney and Agnes had been bickering over by the gate, but they came over now, having apparently made up, Sidney swinging their joined hands between them. “Where’re we going?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Gabriel. “I thought it might be nice to watch the sun set. We should catch it if we hurry.”
Sidney and Bridget met in the middle of a simultaneous side-eye. “Sunsets,” Sidney said. “Doing things for fun. What are you, happy or something?”
Gabriel shrugged, but he was smiling.
They all rode out of the courtyard at a gentle trot, and then once the land opened up before them they gave the horses their heads up the hill, a canter into a gallop and then back to a loping walk once they’d run out of steam.
Agnes’s horse had refused to run, so Sidney went back down to accompany her, ignoring Arthur’s merciless teasing as he did.
When they reached the highest point of the land, they all stopped to face west, out over the cliffs, and the seemingly vast and endless sea.
The sunset was beautiful, just as Gabriel had hoped it would be.
It was the sort of thing he let himself do a lot these days: hope for the best, even if he feared the worst. When he woke up next to Arthur in the mornings, or watched Gwen argue passionately in a council meeting until even Lord Best gave up and lapsed into silence.
When people came to take an audience with him, when he was out on progress to hear the kingdom’s grievances, and instead of complaining, came shuffling shyly up to him to tell him hello and thank you and me too, but nobody knows … yet.
Watching the sun sink into a brilliant gold sky, his friends beside him, he was looking forward to tomorrow—and all the days after that.
In fact, he’d never been more ready.